


Exact In Justice

by INeedMoreHadesBeforeISwoon



Series: Night's Darkness [3]
Category: Ancient Greek Religion & Lore, Lore Olympus (Webcomic)
Genre: Aftermath, Ancient History, Courtroom Drama, F/M, Fear, Imprisonment, Injustice, Justice, Rise of the Dread Queen, Strange-form Intimacy, Strange-form Power Dynamics, War, Wrongful Imprisonment, kind of
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-22
Updated: 2020-01-22
Packaged: 2021-02-27 06:41:58
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,311
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22362775
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/INeedMoreHadesBeforeISwoon/pseuds/INeedMoreHadesBeforeISwoon
Summary: Persephone seeks answers, both to the name she's been given by Erebus and Nyx (Praxidike) and to the justice they have begged her for. In her search for the truth, she will find both light and shadows....
Relationships: Erebus/Nyx (Ancient Greek Religion & Lore), Hades/Persephone (Lore Olympus)
Series: Night's Darkness [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1607764
Comments: 14
Kudos: 29





	Exact In Justice

**Author's Note:**

> For this installment, we have a rating of Mature. There are a few MINOR scenes of physical and Strange-form Intimacy, but it's nothing too graphic, so....
> 
> Warnings:
> 
> Within, you will encounter:
> 
> Musings on war  
> Musings of hyper-powered beings and their ethics  
> Musings on familial betrayal  
> Heavy thematics of Justice/Injustice, right/wrong, and undeserved fear/bigotry/prejudice  
> Rage and grief  
> Wounds and scars  
> and So Many Feels For Which There Are No Words.
> 
> Additionally, moving into this, you should know that much of the mythos I pulled to build out this chapter comes from Theoi.com. That site is beyond informative.
> 
> It's incredible....
> 
> Onward, little ones! The Night and Darkness await your presence within these walls!
> 
> (As always, Lore Olympus belongs to Rachel Smythe; I'm merely playing in her headspace.)

Persephone closed the dusty-smelling book and rubbed her fingers over the bridge of her nose. Her eyes hurt from the dim lighting, but Hecate had been quite insistent that the precious tomes in her library could not be subjected to anything brighter without sustaining damage.

And Persephone needed the information, so she rubbed the spot between her eyes that felt tightened beyond recognition and made plans to take three headache pills with grape juice as soon as she got home.

Hecate looked up from her own volume of ancient prophecies across the table as Persephone leaned back in the creaking chair.

“Finished?”

“As I can be…. Honestly, why do you keep all of these?! Surely it’s not for my benefit; I mean, I doubt I’ll ever need them again after this is over….”

“Well, no. It’s not for your benefit….”

Hecate looked down at the book in front of her, and Persephone gasped to see tear-shine glinting in the dim witchlight glow from the candelabra.

“Hecate, what’s wrong?!”

“Nothing you can fix, Persephone. Not even Praxidike her Dread self can change this past….”

Persephone hovered up over the table, floating down to a soft landing on the creaky wooden bench on which Hecate was seated. Hecate sniffed through a soft giggle as the bench protested, and turned reddening amber eyes on Persephone’s worried face.

“Most of these books include prophecies my mother oversaw the finding of, or her own star-spawned visions and dreams. That’s why I keep them: for those small ties to her that I otherwise would never have….”

Hecate’s voice broke, and Persephone pulled the Goddess of Magic itself into her arms, soft murmurs of sympathy and deep feeling bridging a gap she couldn’t truly understand….

* * *

_From Oneiromancia Historia, Volume 1, Page 17:_

_Rhea was not the only Titan to seek protection for her children as the Titanomachy grew inevitable. Asteria, she of the star-flung eyes, sought refuge for her only daughter after her consort, Perses, that violent one, had already been laid low in early battle. The maiden child was given in the dark of a moonless night to witches shadowy and hidden in a land afar. None but the stars remember her birth-name; ever after, that maid-eternal was known by the epithet bestowed upon her by the witches who raised her, a name fitting of her distant foresight and willingness to return triumphant to the land of her birth._

_They named her Hecate, one who works from afar…._

_Asteria fled, returning to Greece from that unknown land as the final battles of the Titanomachy drew to a close. Zeus, hungry still for the blood of those ancient beings, led the hunt for the weary Asteria._

_She, ever wary, became a lone quail by the cosmic power she wielded and fled into the sky._

_The Bolt-King of Olympus rose and gave chase, unfooled and undeterred._

_Asteria, strength waning, chose her fate._

_Diving into the ocean’s embrace, she cried out to her fallen consort’s mother, that wide-reaching one, Eurybia, she whose power not only holds the tides, but the rising-falling wash of the celestial powers that influence those bounding waters deep._

_Eurybia had always been close to Asteria, whose stars she so loved to see dancing bright above her white-capped homewaters…._

_Eurybia gave what help she could, and as the quail that had been a mighty Titan broke the surface, power answered the call._

_The floating isle of Delos took shape from the essence of the starry-eyed Seer, and mere months later, her remnant became a place of refuge for her sister, Leto, in her time of greatest need…._

* * *

The clanging of the aether-bell jolted Nyx to wakeful startlement, and she snarled to find her arms empty and cold.

“Erebus…?!”

Her harsh whisper could barely be heard over the sizzling magic of the portal forming on the promontory above. She managed to find her feet, legs trembling beneath her as she whipped her head on a twinging neck, trying to find him, hoping beyond the telling that he hadn’t broken his promise.

“Easy, my beautiful night-song…. I only went to fetch your dress….”

His hands were on her ankles, guiding her feet into the open neckline before whisking the clinging fabric up her body and into place. Her hands fumbled their way past the shoulder-bands as his nimble fingers made quick work of the thin ties behind her back, soft touches marking her in love.

She spun as he finished binding her into the thin shell of fabric, kissing him hard and trying to hide how frightened she’d been.

But of course he knew….

“I didn’t mean to scare you. I felt them opening the portal, and I knew you would hardly want to greet them in skin and naught else….”

“You swear that’s all it was…?”

She had to know.

They could ill afford to lie to each other when their freedom was still hanging in the balance, a leaf only a thread away from being torn from the branch by a winter-howling wind.

“Yes. I swear it.”

His eyes were sunset-dark, and she felt the truth in her bones.

“I love you, darkness mine….”

“And I you, wondrous strange thing that you are….”

She smiled, hissing a laugh through her teeth, as he spun her back around to face their guests….

Guest….

Just the one, apparently.

 _Praxidike_ ….

There weren’t many things the Titans, en masse, had ever feared: an end to their power, sure; death, of course – after all, immortality made such things so unalterably terrifying, so horribly final and dark; a lack of respect, indeed and true….

And one name, from a prophecy long known in every mind as if it had been carved there by Khaos itself….

 _Praxidike, Exacter of Justice, Vengeance Made Flesh_ ….

The one who ultimately would determine the fate of the Titans that survived the wrath of the gods who threw them down and bent them low….

Nyx did not fear her, now that she had seen her, heard her, felt her heart.

Erebus, also, did not fear her, never had.

They respected her, sure; deferred to her where they would never bend to others born so short a time ago in the light of the worlds and realms above….

They had done what they needed to do to ensure their justice would bring their happy ending.

Now, they only needed wait for her to see the truth of their souls….

And today, this early dawning day that had Nyx yawning even as she and her loving consort approached the crumbly cliff of stone their justice stood upon:

Today, they’d show her just how unlike those others who deserved the walls they were….

* * *

Persephone watched the Titans approach, thinking back over all she’d learned about the name they’d called her when Hades brought her here a fortnight before.

Praxidike, the name a key in a lock she’d never known bound her soul.

It fit her body like the dress she wore for this meeting, this _hearing_ :

A second skin, beneath instead of without, yet just as perfect and tailored, made for her only, unworn before she donned it in power….

She’d felt hints of this power when she took her vengeance on Apollo’s hurtful self.

She’d dreamed of embracing it more fully as the Erinyes took her under their wings, teaching her of the darker sides of ruling a realm where mortal choices were watched ever and anon and finally weighed in the balance when a life ended….

She’d wondered at the need to stand with her husband when he sat enthroned and crowned in the Halls of Justice, determining and mandating final verdicts on souls too tangled or darksome-wrong for his three judge-shades to be entrusted with their eternities….

Armed with knowledge of prophecies, musings, and hints, Praxidike now stood on a cliff of crumbling stone in a cell made of barrier-walls of power, and she felt herself a Queen in truth as she prepared her questions for the Titans who had begged her mercy.

Who had begged her justice….

Her exacting justice, itself….

* * *

Erebus looked upon the little magenta goddess, her beaming skin blinding in this dark space between the walls.

He was glad she hadn’t waited longer.

The walls seemed to get closer every night, the space smaller, unbearably small….

Even the comfort he found in his consort’s arms, in her lips and claws and teeth and the almost warmth between her cold thighs:

Not even those pleasures could keep the fear of the walls at bay for long as the time dragged by, eternities of grinding need in every hour….

He looked upon her, and saw the Queen he knew could save him from the fear.

He only hoped he wouldn’t fuck it up with a misplaced word or gesture….

**_She came alone, though…._ **

**_That’s something, true…._ **

He and Nyx knelt at the edge of the cliff, their knees touching in the crashing bloody waves at the base of the thing, and her left wing stretched behind him, curling and bending to wrap him in a subtle reminder of their togetherness in this dark and lonesome place.

So far from the open air and tossing breezes of their earlier years….

He swallowed, wrenching his attention back to the Dread Queen, Justice and Vengeance and Mercy all evenly held within her tiny palms, with a….

“What the hell is that thing…?!”

Nyx cackled beside him as he cocked his head, staring at the flat board with pages somehow tacked to the top surface. Praxidike clicked something on the end of a black stick as she crossed her legs and sank to the stone, and the sound sent his eyes flying wide open in wonder.

“A clipboard. I have questions, and I didn’t want to forget anything.”

“What strange marvels those are…. _Clip_ -board. I suppose the shiny metal there is the clip….”

The pink one’s gracious soft smile told him he should let it go. His consort’s elbow to his ribs told him the same thing.

“Sorry. Distracted. Questions, you say, Praxidike…?”

“Yes. You wanted justice. My justice. In order to provide that, I need answers. These questions will most likely bring pain. But I cannot fulfill my role if you withhold information or hide from these truths that I need to hear from your own lips. Are we clear…?”

The power in her voice shivered the air, sparked and rang like iron bells; he and Nyx bowed their heads in unison. She licked her lips as he barely found his voice.

“We’ve waited long for this, Praxidike. Far longer than we ever thought we’d need to. We’ll answer everything.”

“Hide nothing….”

_“And then you’ll give us justice….”_

Their twinned reply echoed from the walls, and Erebus felt the answering ripple from the pink being as those black eyes moved to the first dark line on the top page on her _clip_ -board.

**_Such a strange marvel of a contraption…._ **

“Okay, then. My first question is this: Where were you both when the war began with the battle between Kronos and Zeus on the plains of Orthrys?”

Erebus felt his stomach clench as bile threatened his composure. He swallowed as echoes of memories beat against his mind, his heart, and even Nyx’s wing folding tighter around his shoulder and chest did little to stem the tide. He saw the little pink one’s black-iron eyes flare with fuchsia light as she shielded herself from his loss of control, and he fought hard to rein in the overflow.

Fought, and finally succeeded.

He realized Nyx was rubbing one hand up and down his back, her claws soft points of pain that grounded him further as he took a deeper breath to wash the taste of choices long past and done from his mouth. He turned a soft smile to her without looking fully away from Praxidike, who sat waiting for their answer.

“I was with Nyx, on the other side of the planet, when the first blows were struck.”

“And was it then, within your power, to return, to give your aid to one side or the other?”

He and Nyx both squinted at her blank-masked face.

_But what can we do but trust her…?_

**_We have no other choice. It was always this, for us._ **

_…. Answer her._

“It was. We chose to do nothing. We told you this before.”

“I remember. But still, I must ask these questions. You will answer still, will you not?”

He knew, and he knew that Nyx realized it as well. They didn’t have to answer. They could refuse, and she would go no further for their justice. But it was their choice.

They would have to take their justice from her, in the only way she could give it to them: protocol, precedent….

Exact in their scope, vengeful in their creation.

Nyx and he nodded together, bracing for the pain to come….

* * *

She breathed deeply of the cold-not-cold air of this interdimensional prison space, accepting the agreement of the Titans before her. They would cooperate, for this was the only way she could give them what they craved, what they deserved.

There were rules and regulations that her husband had laid down long years before as the Judge of mortal souls. There were other rules and regulations that applied to the judgments of both mortal and immortal kind that the three Kings together had set in the stone of Olympus itself, carved with their names and seals into the columns of the Hall of Judgment in that highest realm.

In both cases, the events that led directly to an action or inaction were examined in minute detail, for every choice weighs heavy on a soul….

Only with this type of exacting questioning could Praxidike find a way to free these souls her heart knew did not belong within these dark-binding walls.

She focused on her list once more, striving for calm as she brought forth the next question.

“Why did you not return?”

She looked up once more, slowly, knowing it was him who needed to answer.

Erebus, who her husband would never release without unequivocal proof of his utter difference from Kronos.

Because their power was far too similar, far too familial….

And Hades could not see past his fear of that darkness let loose once more to find the truth of this ancient being’s heart….

The dragging breath the Titan of Darkness took into his lungs carried the weight of ages uncountable to her younger mind, and she held her own breath tight behind her lips as he spoke far too quietly for one so literal large:

“Because if we had, I would have destroyed them all….”

* * *

Nyx kept her wing around her consort’s shoulder as the temperature of the air dropped dramatically in the heartbeats following his simple statement. She kept her right eyes on Praxidike’s tiny form as she turned her head, looking a little more closely at Erebus with her other three. His face was carefully blank, though the shadows that made him up inside his binding-form swirled ever more violently, answering the call that Praxidike was knowingly-or-unknowingly sending forth.

“Can you clarify who ‘them all’ would have been, Erebus?”

He groaned out a sigh, and Nyx reached for his mind, only to run into a wall of power it would take far too long to circumvent and breach. She thought about snarling but realized it would do no good.

He would answer Praxidike, and he would do it on his own terms.

She could only wait and trust in his love for her to keep him sane enough to survive this damned hearing….

* * *

He held on to the feeling of Nyx’s wing around his shoulder as the memories and what-could-have-been tore him apart inside.

“ _If_ I had returned, with or without Nyx, both my nephew and his sons would have tried to claim my power and aide for their side…. I would have made a choice, and I would have used all I was to that end. I cannot say which side I would have stood with; in the end, it would not have mattered.

“If I had gone to war, nothing would have been left but ash and dust on a cold wind, Praxidike.”

The little pink thing cocked her head, as if she still did not understand.

He both hated and admired her for it.

“…. Are you saying that you have the power to destroy all life? That you are too powerful to be loose?”

“Not too powerful to be free, but far too dark for such bloody business as war….”

“…. Prove it…. Show me why my husband locked you down within these walls. Show me the truth of what you would have me release back into reality.”

Hate. Admiration.

Praxidike was an enigma, and he had always loved such strange ones….

He obeyed this little pink Queen once again, and though he knew it would break his heart to give in to the promise of freedom and still find his being bound within walls impassable, he reveled in the release she offered him.

He tossed the mask of corporeal existence aside with a thought, and utter darkness filled this cell of half-reality with an unheard howling of shadowy wind.

* * *

Persephone kept her eyes open as the not-glass of Erebus’ chosen form broke apart, the shadows and smokes and dark-writhing mists contained within that mind-borne vessel boiling out like nothing she’d ever seen. This darkness had mass; it sent vibrations shuddering through the stone beneath her body as it expanded, crawling and writhing toward her and away from her, above her and beneath the cliff-side across the stony expanse. Nyx’s form disappeared in the silent explosion, and Persephone could only stare directly ahead as the shadowy-mist swallowed her up as well.

In the midst of these somehow tangible shadows, a voice, wispy and twinkling as starlight, filled her mind with lilting words she couldn’t understand, a tune she thought she could dance to even as she fought to restore her shields and defend herself.

The words she would never be able to translate were still there, but more words, and these she knew, spoke over them now, telling her, in a way she _could_ actually understand, what the Darkness needed her to comprehend.

**_You see, little iron flower, this power could not have been set loose in such an emotional minefield as Orthrys was that day. That first, and all the battles that followed: it was not my fight, and I could not make it mine._ **

**_If I had, everything would have been lost to the shadows._ **

**_What is darkness but the absence of light?_ **

**_And are not matter and light mere shades of the same substances?_ **

**_The shadows are mine._ **

**_But, so too the opposite of physical existences._ **

**_You have only to check your clip-board to see this truth with your own eyes, Praxidike…._ **

**_You’re lucky you’re a delightful strange thing like my Nyx._ **

**_It could well have been your skin if I was as terrible as your husband thinks me to be…._ **

The overwhelming presence left her mind, and she lurched forward a little as the Darkness coalesced into the form so like his consort’s once again.

Praxidike looked down at her clipboard, her chest heaving as her breath misted in the freezing air, and she brushed trembling fingers over ragged edges beneath her carefully penned questions. The previously clean-cut edges of the paper were dissolved, eaten away in random segments that somehow seemed marked with swirling curves and the memories of turbulence. The metal of the crocodile-clip at the top of the board was also eaten away, as if rust had been at it, but there was no oxidation or ochre-color to explain the decay. The shining wood beneath and around the edges of the stack of paper was also affected, even to the point of holes worn through the thickness of the thing.

She raised her eyes to the Titans once more, and Erebus only stared at her as she fought against the fear.

* * *

Nyx held her body still as her consort released his hold on the corporeal form she loved to touch, knowing there was nothing she could do but wait. Praxidike, for her own reasons, demanded this knowledge, this experience, and Erebus would take the chance.

Her beloved Darkness surrounded her with gently caressing shadows and smokes, and the tingles that crept over her skin as he unbound his very essence sent her arousal skyrocketing.

She hoped Praxidike wouldn’t keep them long….

A sudden dampness flooded the space between her thighs as she succumbed to the overwhelming _presence_ of her consort in this, his original form; she gasped without sound as part of his shadows reached for her there, dissolving the evidence of her lust with the softest brush of his entropic power.

She’d forgotten they could play like this….

_Don’t take too long, my Darkness. The sooner you answer her, the sooner she leaves, and the sooner we can play…._

She sensed his attention equally divided between the words he was speaking to Praxidike’s mind, the gentle unmaking he was working on the clipboard the little pink one held in trembling fingers, his pleasuring touch between her own thighs, and his focus on her teasing words. She marveled as she had not in so long at how he seemed able to expand his consciousness, almost as if there were multitudes of his awareness, allowing him to do, to be, so much more than any other ancient Titan-being….

And he was hers….

He had followed the racing trail of her thoughts, and now she felt his humor at her hunger. He was pleased at causing her such frustration, the irritating thing!

**_And yet, you love me still…._ **

His shadows withdrew, condensing and binding back to the sleek lines and slender frame she ached to hold. Her wing was wrapped around him once more as if he’d never moved, and she brought her left arm around under her wing, pulling him against her body as he stared the trembling pink goddess down.

_Perhaps you overdid it, Erebus. She seems rather terrified…._

**_She asked for it…._ **

* * *

Persephone finally managed a shaky breath, clearing her throat softly as she released it again.

“Thank you for showing me, Erebus. I have just a few more questions, and then I will leave you be.”

She felt the blush creep up her cheeks as the fading remnants of a lust as deep as the river of time withdrew from her awareness just a little more.

_They can’t help what they are…._

Nyx turned to look at her, too, and the dancing light in her bloody eyes mirrored the flush Persephone felt on her skin. “Ask, Praxidike, so we can finish this _hearing_ and be done.”

“When did you return to Greece, then? You remained apart for how long?”

Erebus licked his lips, the transparent not-skin around his eyes tightening as he seemed to struggle for language. Nyx answered her again, and Praxidike felt the truth, knew she didn’t have to hear it from both of the Titans bound in this realms-altered prison. “We did not move to return until we felt the binding of Kronos to the pits beneath Tartarus. Time was… shifting, then, and it was difficult to be certain of just exactly how many days or weeks. But it was some short time after the end of the Titanomachy itself. Not the next day, but certainly not more than a score-night later.”

“A score-night…? I’m not familiar with that term.”

Both Titans flashed wolfish grins at her immaturity, and Nyx answered her again. “A twenty-night span. Nearly a week more than a fort-night….”

“Oh!” Persephone blushed deeper with embarrassment. “I should have been able to figure that out.” She chuckled sheepishly, playing for time before the next question, the one she had no idea what the answer would be.

Hades had refused to tell her, and there were no records.

But the precedent had been established. They would answer her.

Praxidike would find this justice for all of them….

* * *

Nyx felt the determination in the little pink goddess warring with some deep worry. She held tighter to her husband as he chuckled low in his throat with Praxidike’s discomfiture.

“It’s fine, little pink one. Obviously, it’s a term that has fallen out of…. Use? Yes, fallen out of use, that’s the phrase.”

“Indeed. Alright. My next question….”

“…. Yes, little goddess?”

Nyx gulped as the pieces finally fell into place. She braced Erebus against her, knowing it wouldn’t be enough.

“What happened when you returned, when you encountered the Six….?”

A muffled _fffhwumphhh_ , and Nyx was holding nothing but air.

She spun around, following him through the aether as he raced around the walls, over the ceiling, howling and clawing in rage and remembered pain. Her hands dug gouges in the bedrock of their prison beneath the churning blood-bright waters, and she slammed her wings flat to her back to avoid drawing attention to their broken lines, the gaps from that long-ago trauma that stood out so vividly when she bristled as she so longed to do. She called out to him with voice and mind, unwilling to lose him once again.

“ _My Erebus, please! We promised! Come back to me…._ ”

**_I’LL RIP THEM APART!_ **

She flinched away as his hate burned in a flash of not-light against her mind, as it nearly unmade her from within. She flinched, but did not try to hide the pain. She pushed it at him, forcing him to acknowledge what he’d done to her.

The air high above, near the back wall where it met the ceiling, rippled as he began to emerge from the aether as his tangible shadow-cloud of darkness. Roiling down the wall like a cascade of angry stormcloud, he rematerialized into physical form as the lower edge of his power touched the crashing waves below. She reached for him with heart and hand, but he turned away from her, clawing against the wall without the words to speak his regret….

She gulped back her tears, bent her pain to her will, and turned back to Praxidike.

“I will answer you, Praxidike, but you must never ask this memory of us again. Swear it true.”

“I swear.” And the power in those words gave Nyx the bridge to divulge this worst injustice, this breaking pain that they could never forgive:

No ever and on would be enough to unmake these scars….

* * *

_We did not go to Orthrys; we knew there would be little left there. We went directly to the fields outside Olympus, and we waited._

_We knew better than to seem a threat when so much death and pain hung in the air like mist after a springtide rain._

_They came then, emerging from the Aether as all we Titans can. Only the oldest godlings, you see, can truly follow our footsteps in that regard; the power gets diluted beyond their generation._

_They came between us, the three gods. The purple and green herded my Darkness back and away from me, and willingly he went, hands held up in surrender. We wanted no fight; it’s why we’d stayed away._

_The blue one, though: his task was one only he could perform._

_The chains were fresh-forged hot, burning me, when he flung them around my wings._

_I refused to howl, though the pain was fierce. I knew my Darkness would have no restraint if I so much as whimpered._

_He saw the smoke rising from my bound wings though, and his eyes…._

_I’ve never seen them colder._

_The gods ordered me through the portal the blue one opened; I could see nothing beyond it. But I knew I had to do as they said._

_If I did not, my Darkness would destroy them all until we two were the only things left in a dead world…._

_I went through the portal, into this box, and as I passed the threshold fully, the chains dissolved. I turned to scream at him not to follow me, but they’d planned their trap well._

_They knew how much he loved me, and seeing me walk into an unknown, chained and bound and hurting:_

_Of course he would follow immediately._

_He realized we had fallen fully for their trap when he saw me standing unbound in these bloody waters, and the gateway closed behind him, trapping us within these walls._

* * *

Persephone couldn’t cry.

She wouldn’t.

Not until she found all the answers, until the justice showed her the way.

She swallowed and turned to her next question.

“How much time passed before the King came to you for the first time after you were imprisoned?”

Nyx answered her again; Erebus was still facing away from them across the length of the cell, lines tense, unnaturally still.

“It was something close to one hundred fifty years; time becomes… slippery, I think is the word, the older you get, little pink thing.”

“And what happened when he came to you?”

“He came with a bevy of shade-soldiers for protection, as if we’d attempt assassination from the start. He told us that our fate was decided, along with the rest of the Titans, and we would remain here for the rest of time.”

“…. That can’t be it….”

“It wasn’t…. We asked him how our fate could be determined if we had not been given a chance to defend ourselves. We asked him if he’d forgotten how we had _not_ fought with our family, how we’d bent to him and his brothers when they came for us on the field with chains of fire and doors of shadow.

“He said that all the Titans who remained alive shared their fate by birth.”

Persephone’s mouth fell open.

This couldn’t have been her husband.

Praxidike refocused with an effort.

There were answers still to be had.

“And then what happened, Nyx?”

Erebus was suddenly there, between her and Nyx, as tall as her husband or just a fraction taller, but seated on the stone just a few feet away. Tendrils of smoke coasted around his face in an unseen wind of power as he stared at her with eyes of cold sunset fire.

“I told him I heard my nephew’s voice in his words, but that I forgave him his fear. I begged him then to see us for who we are, not what we were born. And when he refused, I lost control. I unmade half of the shade-guards before he and the rest escaped my grasp. They are the only lives I’ve ever taken, and I regret each one.

“But I would change nothing if I could. He made his choices, and they’ve broken every hope I ever had for him to be better than my nephew.

“I beg of Praxidike that she can see what her beloved cannot.”

Something terrible coiled behind those fiery eyes, and Persephone cowered inside her heart; Praxidike, however, straightened her crown in her mind and gave a nod, full of solemn dignity and honored promise.

“This last question, and I will let you rest while I seek your justice.”

Erebus’ voice was dead, and he didn’t glance aside as Nyx, also god-sized now, crouched beside him and wrapped her arms around his shoulders.

“Ask….”

“What will you do with your time outside this cell…?”

Tears of starlight mist fell from sunset eyes before a face of bound-shadow turned toward a shoulder of midnight velvet covered in tangled coal-dust hair. Nyx answered her in a broken whisper as Praxidike rose to her feet on the stone.

“Live, and feel the breeze, and find some peace somehow, outside these walls….”

Persephone turned, her power opening the portal back to Underworld’s reality, leaving innocents and innocence behind her on the cliff in a prison made of her husband’s ancient power….

**Author's Note:**

> Okay, so, firstly, lemme just say that Oneiromancia Historia is NOT a real book. I created that passage to build out Hecate's backstory as I found hints of it on theoi.com. Oneiromancy is the interpretation of dreams to foretell future events, and is one of Asteria's listed abilities. Hence, a history of that power would include the events that led to her "death" and her daughter's rise.
> 
> Secondly, for this series, I've decided to treat the "primordial" beings as essentially Titans of an older kind. Erebus, Nyx, Gaia, Oranus, etc - all are technically older than Titans and classed differently, but for this, to keep with the themes of prejudice and injustice to innocents, they need to be treated as Titans. Additionally, Rachel has already drawn some parallels with the Titans in their construction, and Nyx is basically a Titan in LO. So, Erebus is too. I didn't want to get into some weird, uncle/niece shit or anything. 
> 
> Nyx and Erebus are of the same generation as Gaia and Oranus, who are Kronos' parents here. Hence, Erebus is Kronos' uncle, and for simple ease of use, Erebus and Hades can be considered "cousins." Anyhoo....
> 
> You may see some similarities in the way I'm treating Erebus' power here to the way I treat his power in my Primordial Lore. Basically, I don't really think I can ever paint him that much differently. It's beyond logical to me that his powers of darkness would include "unmaking" and entropy. I don't think I can ever leave him as just "obscuring darkness." But I hope I provided a bit of a different tone to it this time, as well as some slightly different world-building in how he and his power manifests. 
> 
> There was a lot to do in this chapter, a lot of interplay and politicking to get through. I hope it all worked for y'all, and didn't seem too boggy. 
> 
> Basically, I'm running with the idea of "the conquerors write the history of the land." The truth about the Titans has been altered by fear-mongering, and literally, Nyx and Erebus are innocent of the crimes for which they've been punished. Will Praxidike find their justice?
> 
> Now. Lastly. 
> 
> Praxidike translates as "exacter of justice." I worldbuilt out from there to "vengeance made flesh." But you may have noticed the title of this installment, and how Erebus refers to her in his thoughts, is "exact in justice."
> 
> I love playing with words. 
> 
> Can ya see what I'm doing here? I'm turning Praxidike into a Truth god. That's why Praxidike's thoughts are rather separate from Persephone's. Persephone loves her husband. Praxidike seeks the truth that has been hidden. 
> 
> These themes.... I can never really get away from them. Not Sorry.
> 
> Alright. I think the next chapter I can come up with some Titan Tenderotica smoot to break the tension a bit. So, we'll shoot for that. 
> 
> And Praxidike will continue to hunt answers. She's by no means ready to exact this justice for the Titans bound wrongly between the realms....
> 
> The King has a lot to answer for....


End file.
